""The Leftovers" Recap: What's Eating Nora? EVERYTHING.

Nora has a dark past. And a dark present. And future, judging by this episode.

Let’s talk about The Leftovers, which came back this week with a particularly depressing episode. We got a look inside Nora’s everyday life, which we already knew included torturing herself by interviewing people in her situation – those, who have lost loved ones in The Departure. It turns out that Nora isn’t freelancing at all. In fact, she’s working for the government, ostensibly trying to suss out who actually deserves money from the government for their tragedy. It wouldn’t be a pleasant job for anyone, but for Nora, who lost her husband and children in The Departure, it takes on a particularly creepy masochistic undertone.

Speaking of masochistic and creepy, this episode also sees Nora paying a prostitute to shoot her. No, don’t worry, she does this all the time. Ok, but it’s completely normal, she’s wearing Kevlar and has a mattress laid out. What do you mean that doesn’t make it any better? Angel, the panicked hooker that Nora wants to pay for the “service”, also doesn’t think it’s normal, but she takes the money anyway and shoots. After a tense moment, Nora rises up, alive and relatively unscathed. We’ll leave the amateur psychoanalysis to anyone else, who wants to open that can of worms.

Bur it’s not like Nora isn’t moving on in at least one way. Following the revelation that her husband was cheating with their children’s preschool teacher, Nora takes to driving past the school to check out the guilty-looking woman. She also goes to court to divorce her Departed husband, for plot reasons.

Maybe it has something to do with Question 121, Nora's survey query that was flagged because 100 percent of her respondents answered, yes, they believe their Departed is now in a better place. Nora's boss asks how she'd answered the question herself.

“Yes. Yes three times.”

Away from the drama at home, Nora goes to New York to attend a DROP (Departure Related Occupation And Practice) conference, aka the place for annoyingly vague DSD officials and completely nutso Guilty Remnants members to mingle. It’s all off to a bad start, when Nora realises that her attendee badge has been given to someone else my mistake, leaving her with a generic guest pass. Again, for plot reasons. This is where we’ll leave it, short of revealing this episode’s plot twist. There’s a make out, an arrest and a change of heart. The Leftovers airs Sundays on HBO.